


Transcendence

by Elizabehta_Beilschmidt



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Badass Mabel Pines, Canon Divergence - Weirdmageddon, Canon Divergence - Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back the Falls, Demon!Mabel AU, Hurt No Comfort, Post-Weirdmageddon, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25809295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elizabehta_Beilschmidt/pseuds/Elizabehta_Beilschmidt
Summary: The switching Stans plan was supposed to work, but they failed. And now, Mabel has to face the consequences.
Relationships: Bill Cipher & Mabel Pines, Dipper Pines & Mabel Pines
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Transcendence

**Author's Note:**

> ... Or the demon!AU I've seen around with Dipper, but with Mabel. Because.
> 
> An oldie, but I wanted to revamp and post here in AO3 and [Tumblr](https://gilbirda.tumblr.com)!

She never thought nothing of it. Really, what could go wrong? They managed to stop the Weirmageddon in time with the help of everyone in Gravity Falls, betting everything they have to save their beloved town. But when the bright light subsided, the Pines family knew something went wrong. Horribly wrong. Because Dipper was missing and Mabel couldn’t move _at all_.

Scared, she started to call for her brother, her brown eyes focusing in things randomly, searching for a sign that he was with her.

“Mabel!”, she faintly heard her uncle Ford scream and her vision tunneled in his face. “Mabel, can you hear me?” She couldn’t nod but focused in his eyes trying to talk through them. “Good, you are here with us.” Then she heard another voice nearby but couldn’t make the words. “Yes, she is fine. No, not responding. We must go back with the others.”

Mabel felt her body be carried in someone’s arms, but she couldn’t see who it was. Everything happened so slowly and yet so fast and bright… Someone please turn off that light! It was hurting her eyes. She could heard voices muffled in the distance, worried voices, but none of them was her brother’s. 

Where was Dipper?

  


\--------------------------

  


She woke in a strange bed that wasn’t hers. At least the room was dark enough and her eyes adjusted perfectly fine to it. She yawned and stretched, feeling the blissful pop in her back and joints. Somehow Mabel felt like a new person, fully rested and prepared for a new day with…

Dipper.

He wasn’t beside her or anywhere in the room, sleeping.

The panic came back, thoughts and memories of their attempt to kill Bill Cipher whirling in her mind, and the same awful feeling in the pit of her stomach when she thought that _oh my god where’s Dipper._

She ran downstairs realising by the pictures on the walls that this was Soos’ house, feeling the tears starting to form in the corner of her eyes as the real fact of the destruction of Gravity Falls settled in her mind. The Shack, her sweaters, the _memories_ … gone. They would have to rebuild everything from scratch and _Dipper wasn't here._

“Oh, she's awake”, said Abuelita while putting more coffee in a jar on the battered table. Her uncles, Wendy and Soos where sitting there silently sipping their drink and seemingly lost in their thoughts until Ford came back to reality and ran to her.

“Mabel, dear, how are you? Do you feel dizzy? Unwell? Possessed?”, he took out his small light and blinded the girl with it. The panicked voice told her that something was really wrong, and not just her brother's disappearance.

“Leave the kid alone, brother. She looks fine enough for me”, Stan murmured sounding very tired and _old_. Mabel remembered the swap her uncles made to trick Bill, but Stan seemed to be ok and knowing who they were. At her evident confused face, he answered her questions. “We failed, kid. Bill saw through our plan in the last moment and escaped, but was disintegrated in the process… or that's what brains here thinks happened.” Ford nodded.

“Bill lost his physical form and couldn't go back the moment he entered Stanley's mind. When cornered, realised what we plotted and part of his energy got out.” Ford sighed visibly uncomfortable.

“Dipper….”, the girl whispered as a question. Everyone in the room looked away from her tear-stained face.

“We… we don't know, Mabes”, Stan said softly, a comforting hand in her shoulder. 

  


\--------------------------

  


She didn't eat or sleep for days, refusing to move away from the bed and only accepting the water that Wendy or Abuelita brought her every few hours. Mabel seemed to have lost her will to live, the sparkle in her eyes gone like her brother and more than one thought that Mabel wasn't going to last much.

Word had spread about the tragedy and many considered a funeral for the little Pines boy, but Mabel _insisted_ that he wasn't dead. Dipper couldn't be dead. She swore she could feel him somewhere with the twins ESP (Ford cocked an eyebrow at this), but after three days nobody believed her. Even Mabel started to entertain the thought of Dipper's death when her family left her alone.

Until one restless night, she opened her eyes and saw the world in grey scale. 

“...el…”, she heard. Mabel looked everywhere trying to find the source of the voice. “...bel” the voice repeated. It was a boy's voice, but it was so distorted that could be anyone's.

“Mabel!”

“AAAAH!”

The girl fell on her butt and looked up to see… Dipper. Tears pooled on her eyes, happy to see him at last and ignoring the fact that he was translucid. She ran to his arms, crying, mumbling about how lonely she has been and how happy she was to see that he was ok and was coming back.

“Mabel…”, his tone carried multiple voices in one, like whispers floating on the wind. Mabel liked none of that. 

“Dipper?”, she asked feeling more confused when he didn’t hug back. “Are you ok?”

The boy watched her with a strange glint in his eyes and a sad expression, as if this was a painful experience for him. He took her hands in his and smiled briefly before getting serious again and spoke:

“Mabel, I’m sorry. I’m afraid…”, he looked elsewhere as his voice cracked in a weird way, “I’m afraid we’ll never see each other again.”

She felt that her whole world fell apart in that moment. Mabel didn’t want to believe him, but if Dipper said so then it must be true. She trusted her brother, but still she had to ask.

“Why…?”

“Mabes, I’m dead. Can’t you see it?” He got back a few steps and stood in the middle of the grey room. His feet didn’t touch the ground and now the girl could see that his body wasn’t really opaque. _Oh no_. “I died that day, when we killed Bill. Yes, he is dead”, he added when his sister opened her mouth to ask, “and he is gone for. But… Some of his energy escaped from Stan’s mind and got to us in time to survive, like a symbiote, and still lives within us. Within you.” He made a face at the correction.

“And you? Why am I alive?”, tears were running down her cheeks uncontrollably. Her brother was really dead. Dipper wouldn’t come back. 

“The energy in me wasn’t enough to protect me from the explosion, but yours was greater. I guess you were the superior twin after all”, the smile in his lips was everything but happy. “Mabes, I…”

He was interrupted by a loud noise from somewhere in the background and the place started to _melt_. Walls dissolving like a candle burning to its end, the grey-and-white room was slowly warning her that her dream was coming to an end. No, no, no. She didn’t want to wake up!

“Dipper!”, she exclaimed running to her brother, but when she jumped to his arms, instead of getting her very needed hug, Mabel found herself on the trembling floor and with a sore shoulder. 

“It’s my time, then”, the boy looked at his hands beginning to disappear and smiled again to his sister. “I love you, Mabel.”

“No!”

“I hope you remember me, as a part of myself will live inside of you forever.” His feet were now gone and his signature pine tree hat was dissolving like sand on the wind. 

“No, Dipper. NO!”

“Be happy”, he closed his eyes.

And just like that, all that was left of her brother exploded in tiny little particles floating in mid-air over the carpet she was sitting on. Before she could see what they were clearly, it floated to her chest and passed through her clothes directly to her skin, and a weird warmth condensed in her heart. She could feel it get bigger and bigger, making it difficult to breathe, arching her back. 

She opened the eyes she didn’t know were closed and found herself floating in the colored room, the _real_ room, and she was _shining_ brighter than the Sun. On the door, she spotted her uncles and Wendy watching her with their mouth so open that they could swallow a few flies, a hand at the level of the eyes to protect them from the light.

Then, something inside of her snapped and she fell unceremoniously to the floor with a loud thud. 

“Mabel!”, she heard Ford before she could see him. Someone took one of her hands and a gloved hand checked her pulse. “Are you ok?”

“Dipper…”, she managed to say.

“Did you see him? Where?” Stanley looked confused.

“He… He is gone, Grunkle”, her voice broke and Mabel felt tears start to fall again. “Dipper is dead.”

  


\--------------------------

  


The following days were similar to the ones before, but now Mabel refused to go back to her bed. She spent her days sitting on a chair in the living room, watching everyone move around without saying another word. She slept sometimes, but it was scarce. Alas, she never looked really tired.

Ford started to suspect that something had happened that day she woke up being a Star. Something big, and something connected to Bill Cipher. When his grand-niece showed unconscious control over things -stuff floating in mid-air or catching fire without reason, and the like-, Ford felt like crying. 

Not only had they lost their precious Dipper, but Mabel was becoming _something_ else. Something dangerous. Demonic.

When he first approached the girl about this, she just held his stare and said nothing, creeping everyone in the room, listening to Ford’s explanation of how this could have happened. He thought that Bill’s energy had a consciousness of its own and attached itself to the twins, trying to survive, transforming their bodies into a more appropriate vessel. The changes may be slow, but they would definitely see it sometime soon. He didn’t say anything about Dipper’s death or strange “fusion” with his sister, but she understood nonetheless.

Mabel just nodded and let herself fall into the catatonic state again when her uncle finished. No more tears or screams. The girl seemed to accept what was happening to her without fight in her body, and the people in the room were afraid that it was too late for her mind. That she was going insane, and that was a word they would not like to associate to their beloved Mabel. It was just too much like _him_.

As more days passed, the new mayor declared the “Never Mind All That” Act, and started the rebuilding of their town as if a end-of-the-world catastrophe never happened. When the Shack was recovered from the ashes of the battle, the Pines moved to their new home with a broken Mabel lost in her mind, trying not to cry when she walked up the stairs to their… _her_ room with her distant eyes and pale skin. 

She didn’t came out for days.

  


\--------------------------

  


But the dreams came back. Almost everyday, even when she thought she was awake, Mabel saw the evil figure she didn’t want to see ever again in her life. He laughed at her demise, he taunted her, mocked her, made fun of her loss. “Where’s Pine Tree?”, he usually asked, and if he had a mouth she was sure he’d be smiling like crazy.

At first the girl screamed at him, cried, punched him; anything to vent her rage and sorrow. Dipper was dead and she was becoming a… _demon,_ all because a stupid triangle wanted to take over the world. She wanted to die, then. If Dipper wasn’t coming back to her she didn’t want to go on anymore.

She asked the demon. “Just finish me already”, she whispered one lonely night a week later in her black-and-white room at the renewed Shack. “Kill me so I can be at peace with my brother.”

“I can’t do that, Shooting Star”, he said twirling his signature cane in one finger. “And I guess you know it as well as I do.”

She somehow knew he was right, somewhere deep inside told her she just _couldn’t_

__

__

It was one evening when she jumped from the roof and Wendy found her broken body on a bush, crying and bleeding like hell, but definitely alive and awake, that she accepted this new feature of her new reality: She wasn’t going to die anytime soon. Maybe never. An eternity of _this_ was all that was left for her.

Would she age? She didn’t know, but the thought of watching everyone she loved die before her eyes was frightening, even more that the growing powers inside her. 

She the cursed everything, wishing for it to disappear. If she couldn’t die, she didn’t want a world where she had loved so much and had been so happy. But the cruel destiny, and a cruel demon triangle, wouldn’t even grant her wish.

“Woah there, girl. You might want to rethink that wish”, he said in one dream but Mabel could hear the underlying mocking tone. “You what they say, _it might become true_.”

And next morning nothing happened. With all her powers, all the time of the world, and she couldn’t have her one and only wish granted.

  


\--------------------------

  


As months passed, she had to sit and watch her grunkles worry about her _condition_ , as Ford used to say when they talked about it, when Mabel seemed to sleep less and less to the point that at night she didn’t have anything to do but go to the dreamscape out of boredom. She didn’t need to eat as well, and just sat there watching them eat with her empty eyes, creeping them until she decided to wait for them to eat anywhere else on the house. Stan felt guilty when he was relieved by her decision instead of worried.

And her parents? They lied to them, saying that the twins wanted so hard to stay in Gravity Falls, that they had a home tutor for them. Ford searched his old professor documents and send them by fax (changing his name, since Mabel’s parents didn’t know about Ford and explaining it would mean explaining about Weirdmaggedon) until it was settled that “the twins” could stay. Stan cried for the first time in many years when the call ended. He had failed to everyone, he was supposed to protect the children from harm this summer and he failed.

The summer ended and Mabel got the hang of her new powers, Bill’s powers. She almost could hear his voice on her ear teaching her how to do it. Levitation, flying and making stuff float at will was as easy as breathing now, and small sparks of blue fire appeared on her fingertips when she got angry for whatever reason. The Pines household had accepted the new condition and no longer horrified them, so when she confessed she was being visited by the triangle demon on her “dreams” Ford didn’t even flinch. He has begun to accept that Mabel wasn’t going to turn back to normal. Not when he could almost hear the cursed voice of the bane of his existence on her words. Her eyes no longer full of wonder, but a void so deep and black with a little twist of madness.

  


\--------------------------

  


The first time that Mabel realised that she couldn’t feel anything was on her own funeral. Watching her parents cry before the empty tombs of her brother and hers she couldn’t bring any grief or sadness to surface, not even one little tear came to her call and her deep brown eyes observed with curiosity as her mother broke down on her father’s arms, the loud sobs filling the enormous cemetery they were burying the little coffins made for the lost twins that died in an “accident” back in Gravity Falls. Just a little fire in the forest near the house and her parents believed that neither body could be found on the ashes. 

She knew it was necessary to fake their death up to some point, but time passed so fast now that when Ford asked her to make the fire on the anniversary of Weirdmaggedon it seemed like a blink of the eye for her. Being a creature of pure energy was starting to weigh down on her and it was now that she took notice of her aging grunkles with even more wrinkles that last summer, while she remained the same.

“Oh”, she had said then before turning back to the backyard to fake her own death.

  


\--------------------------

  


When Soos got married, three years later, everyone had already moved on from the loss of the little Pine twins and her name was written somewhere in a slab on the main road. The ceremony was small, just a few friends and family of the hispanic friend and his beautiful wife, Melody. She was expecting, no surprise, and the man-child never seemed so happy on his life. He promised on his wedding that he would be the father he never got and wished for his baby to be happier than he ever was in his life.

Mabel made a silent promise to make that true when she watched from the sidelines, invisible to the eyes of the townsfolk attending the ceremony; and, for a second, she heard the demon’s voice in her ears, laughing. “It’s that a deal I hear?”, he said. Mabel didn’t flinch. He had been haunting her in her “dreams”, telling her that making deals was now in her nature, that she eventually would fill in his eternal job, that she would trick people into making horrible deals out of desperation. She was disgusted by it, remembering just how _he_ had tricked her brother and her into Weirdmaggedon and resulting in the loss of everything she loved and _was_. 

She was **never** going into making deals.

  


\--------------------------

  


A few months after the 10th anniversary of the official death of the twins, another Pines left them for good. Stanley Pines never was one for a healthy life and cholesterol took him away peacefully one night. He didn’t suffer, even died with a smile, maybe a good dream he was having. The town mourned for a week the former Mr Mystery, as Soos took his job and has been managing the Shack for a few years now, visiting the shop and giving their condolences to the friends and family that remained. Mabel floated around listening to the soft whispers, again feeling completely left out without the ability to relate to their feelings. She had never felt so alienated in her life, so different and _weird _. She looked exactly the same as she did when her life changed forever, the same skirt, the same sweater, the same headband. Her now black eyes was the only thing out of place, that’s true, but no one looked at them now so it didn’t matter anymore.__

____

____

“Mabel, come here”, she heard Ford’s voice and then she realised that the house was once more empty and it was snowing on the outside. Was it winter again? But it seemed yesterday that her grunkle died and it was in October! Nevertheless, she approached her grunkle and looked at him waiting for what he wanted to say. 

The man sighed. She wasn’t his niece anymore and it was more than obvious now. She was in this realm barely every few weeks for a day or two and she didn’t seem to realise that her body was translucent most of the time she became visible for them to speak. She wasn’t the demon he feared she’d become, but she wasn’t Mabel; _it_ was something else in between, a being made of energy from another world in a little girl’s shape with some memories of its vessel’s past life. It didn’t fight for dominion, as the child’s mind and body surrendered to it so many years ago before his own eyes, and fused successfully with her. He wondered if she recognized him at all, if she felt as sad as he was for everything that happened to her and Dipper, if she did care _at all_ for the people she used to love and cherish. He asked himself not few times if there was any humanity left in her body or if she was lost and dead as the town believed her to be.

Nevertheless, he explained that didn’t have much left, that his old body was giving up on him, and that she was going to be on her own. Eventually, she was going to leave Gravity Falls and spend eternity alone… and forgotten. He launched himself in a speech so many times practised alone in the rusty lab downstairs, not looking really at the void eyes of Mabel in front of him, not caring anymore if she was listening or not. When he finished, he took the cane he hated so much and went to his room to sleep.

He died next spring the same way as his twin, with a gentle smile on his lips, dreaming of the future he was robbed with his family united and adventures with his brother in the Stan’o War II.

  


\--------------------------

  


It was raining that night, but for Mabel it wasn’t even a breeze on her skin. She didn’t feel anything, no pain, no sorrow, not even the cold as it was winter again. A year has passed and when she went to see her grunkle she discovered that he died already. Soos told her so with an uncomfortable smile on his face and a nervous glance to his chubby little son, now six years old, and she got the message that a demon like her wasn’t welcome anymore to the house that once was her home. Mabel smiled in understanding and left to never be seen again, leaving him with a weird pain in his chest wondering if the guilt he was feeling should really be there. He had a family now, responsibilities, and as awesome as having his own ghost haunting the Shack was, he knew she was in the end of the day a demon, and his son’s well being came first. 

  


\--------------------------

  


Kevin, as she later learned was the little boy’s name, was now a young man and Mabel watched him every now and them, taking care of the man’s health and security as she promised so many years ago. Soos’s family was expanding as now two beautiful girls were running around the Shack, sleeping in what once was her room, little twins with identical big smiles and brown eyes full of curiosity. She swore to protect them, the same as their big brother, so they would never suffer the pain of losing their other half like she did in the past.

Soos was getting a few grey hairs on his head, same as Melody, and from time to time Wendy came to the Shack to see how everything was going around, talk about the Pines and have a moment to remember that fateful summer. They were the only ones who did.

Mabel appreciated that. If they didn’t talk about it she knew she’d had forgotten her name long ago as no one called her anymore. She spent almost always in the dreamscape, practising with her powers and focusing in the balance of the demon inside of her. Bill was always there calling her Shooting Star, mocking her, asking for her brother, taking her to the limit. Her only company was the hated demon that took away her life, and she had told him so, but stopped trying to kill him since he seemed to be made of smoke in her dreams. 

Little by little, he had said, all that made her _Mabel_ would disappear. “It’s only a matter of time, Shooting Star, that you accept me as your only companion.”

  


\--------------------------

  


She knew what he meant when she watched her last friend die before her own eyes. Wendy was the one who lasted more than everyone else, reaching more than a hundred years. This time it was cancer what took her friend away and Mabel could do nothing to stop it, her body didn’t respond and could not say the words to make a “deal” to make her stay alive a few more years. At least the woman was loved and had great life, a beautiful family by her side, and lots of children to remind her the wonders of adventure.

Mabel, on the other hand, was now truly alone.

She came back to the dreamscape feeling a bit of despair, a now strange feeling on her empty body, and tears finally came to her eyes. She cried and cried for her lost friend, her brother, her family, her childhood. All of that, brutally taken from her by that disgusting demon laughing at her from his spot a few steps behind. 

She turned around and screamed at his face everything she felt, how she hated him and everything he had done to her. She launched herself to him and for the first time, the triangle was solid enough for her to do some real damage to his mocking eye. God, how she hated it when he did that.

Mabel cursed him and screamed so loud until her throat hurt and the tears stopped falling. Her punches didn’t seem to do much damage and his “smile” was still in place when her little arms didn’t move again for another hit. 

“Tired already, Shooting Star?”

“Shut up.” Even her own voice seemed strange to her. “I hate you so much.”

“Awwww”, he said with another laugh.

“You destroyed my life”. She closed her eyes feeling more tears coming. Feelings she couldn’t comprehend came back full force and Mabel was being crushed by years of unattended emotions.

“ _You_ did”, he answered in a more serious tone, “that day when you tried to kill Bill Cipher. Or have you forgotten already?”

“Shut the **fuck** up!”, the girl growled and a pulse of energy emerged from her body, launching the triangle a few metres back. “You did it! You killed my brother! You made me this… monster I am now!”. The girl jumped again to the fallen form of her enemy and pinned him under her body.

“Oh dear, don’t be like that”, he smiled with his eye and Mabel felt sick to her stomach. “We are _so_ going to enjoy an eternity together~”.

“I refuse to be stuck with you, Bill Cipher!”, and as if she had said the funniest joke in the multiverse, the demon started to laugh his existence out. The girl-demon was slightly taken aback, but still weary if this was some kind of trick.

“You amuse me, Shooting Star”, the triangle managed to say, “Do you really not recognize yourself?”, and the weirdest thing happened.

Where there wasn’t a mouth, now was a smirk. The triangle was gone with a blink and in his place was the pale body of a girl with a severe need of sunlight, her eyes a black pool of nothingness and her body barely covered by an outfit she did recognize too well, but it was so battered and torn by years of use that the colors had disappeared completely, leaving them almost in greyscale.

She was looking at herself in a mirror. Her hands cut with the raw edges of the glass and blood started to run all over her reflection, making it even more horrible.

The other Mabel laughed at her face, her voice a mix of _his_ voice and her own. 

“Surprise!”, she said. “This whole time you were talking to yourself! Isn’t it funny? C’mon Shooting Star, you are the only one not having any fun.”

She jumped back and watched in horror as the reflection got up and jumped out of the mirror, before watching her with a curious smile. She couldn’t believe it. She _was_ really crazy now. Bill was never there, only herself alone in the void of her existence, and it would be so until the end of times. If she ever considered the small possibility of company, even that of her nemesis’, she wasn’t having any of that now. She was truly and completely  **alone** .

Alone…

Mabel smiled and laughed softly. Her walking reflection caught her thoughts and smiled too. 

… for **all** eternity…

It was now a full scale laugh fest, neither of them knowing exactly what was so funny, but laughing until their voices merged as one. Mabel barely thought that how could she even consider that Bill was there, it was obvious now to her the impossibility of it. After all, it seemed her destiny was to be alone.

Alone and forgotten.

She laughed the last bit of happiness there was inside of her body and opened the eyes she didn’t know were closed. Unsurprisingly, her reflection wasn’t there. 

The girl-demon looked down to her clothes and thought they needed a change. Something more… fitting. Black pants and a white buttoned shirt appeared instead of the old Mabel-y outfit, along with a black coat lined in gold star motives. Yeah, now we were talking.

She willed a cane in her right hand and smirked when it appeared out of thin air. It was a cool symbol of her predicament and how she came to be. Bill was going to be around her existence forever and the least she could do was pay little tribute to him. But still there was something missing…

With a flick of her wrist, a top hat was in her left hand and she put it in its rightful place. Now, it was just perfect. 

  


\--------------------------

  


The little girl didn’t know why she was doing this. The book she found was nearly illegible and kinda spooky, but it promised the power to protect herself and the ones she cared for. The only thing she needed was some candles and time to make the proper ritual.

The latin words sounded weird out loud, but it was written beside the instructions of the circle she drew with chalk, so they must be the right words. She was sure she said them right when the world shifted and became black and white, all colors fading and time slowing until the little fly on her window seemed frozen in place.

Blue fire emerged from the pentagram on the floor of her bedroom and a figure with a cane materialized on the center of the circle surrounded by the flames as if they didn’t burn at all despite the intense heat.

“Well well…”, the figure said taking off the top hat and twisting the cane on the right hand. “It’s nice to be back!”

The girl was taken aback when the demon was a girl no older than her. Maybe a bit taller, but the same round face, the same big eyes, the same short legs. 

“Are you… Are you the demon? Cipher?”, the girl asked trying to keep her voice even. The other girl smiled at the name.

“You could say that~”, she answered putting the hat back over her black headband. 

“I need your help”, the child managed to say after a few seconds of hesitation. If this was the demon on the book then she could help her. “I will pay you with everything I have, I’ll give you my soul… but don’t let him take my brother!”. That seemed to spark curiosity on the yellow-ish eyes of the strange demon before her.

“I’m listening.”

“My father.. he is trying to kill me to get to my little brother. His mother died and I am the only one left who could protect him.”

The demon looked at her with those deep eyes that told many stories, many things passing through them so fast she couldn’t figure out what the other was thinking behind the serious mask of indifference.

“I see”, was all she said. Hope bloomed on the girl’s heart and a need for this to be get over with soon rose. Her brother was in danger and the demon was looking at her room like it was some kind of museum! 

“Are you going to help me?”, the need was obvious on her voice and the demon looked back to her with a wicked smile on her lips.

“It’d come with a price, you know.”

“Anything!”, the child shrieked. That amused the demon even more.

“All right then, we’ll work the details later. Tonight, you’ll sleep like a baby and tomorrow all will be gone. It’s a deal?”, the girl-demon extended her gloved hand surrounded in blue flames and the other girl didn’t even hesitate. The decision was made. Her brother was worth it.

“It’s a deal.”

And with another creepy maniacal laugh the demon was gone, color was back and time resumed its course as if she was never there.

Next morning, her house was filled with police sirens and medics. Her father had been stabbed overnight in a robbery gone wrong. An aunt she had never heard of came home in tears, willing to adopt them.

It was many many years later when she found out her price: She couldn’t find, no matter how hard she looked, one sole photograph of her with her brother. 


End file.
